Cloud's Rider

He reached the gates, out of breath and having worked up a sweat despite the cold, and in the little time it took the guard inside to get down the steps from his rifle-slot and to open the gate—for that moment he could feel how all the snowbound wilderness and darkness at his back waited for an outcome.

The latch didn’t open fast enough. He really, badly wanted in.

Now.

There were hunters in the Wild that could image not being there. Or make a foolish human think that safety was right toward its jaws.

The gate opened.

“Figure it’s long gone,” the gate-guard said.

“Figure so, too,” he said, trying to be calm—the guard likely couldn’t figure all that was in the sendings. But he was embarrassed to be shaking as he was. “Thanks,” he managed to say and, after his moment of panic, set out down the street, slowly, feeling the long run he’d made getting over here in sore feet, aching joints.

He passed the smith’s place, the tavern, the miners’ barracks. Everything there was dark and still. It was possible no one had noticed—but down the street he saw some few lights.

The doctor’s house wasn’t one.

Horses were disturbed. Burn sent a feeling of <disturbance> and Flicker got on her feet with a sudden thump of hooves on boards that would have wakened the sleeping dead.

The just plain sleeping were an easier scare, and Guil reached instinctively for the gun he always kept to his right.

Right now there was Tara, who was suddenly up on one elbow, a feat of flexibility Guil didn’t quite manage. He lay still to do his listening. So did Burn, for some few moments, while Flicker was up on her feet, a living shadow against the wall.

“Damn!”

For himself, Guil couldn’t swear to what was ordinary or not in a given area. The lay of the land and the mix of creatures that lived there made a lot of differences from one mountain to the next and down to various zones of the plains. He’d been in a lot of them, at one time and another.

He’d never heard this particular flux of panic—except when a piece of a mountain snowbank dissolved and creatures died in a boil of snow and air, giving off their I’m-not-here and I’m-over-there that was their ordinary defense of their burrows.

There was death up there.

“You have a slide zone up there?”

“No,” Tara said. “Feels like it, doesn’t it?”

She got down in the blankets, cold from the air, and he put his arms around her. She shivered, then.

“Second thoughts,” she said.

She might well have them. But he thought about <kids and avalanche,> and <kids and spook-bear,> that being all the image that would come to his mind for what they’d felt.

“You’re crazy,” Tara said. But she was thinking something far worse. She was thinking about her <escape from Tarmin,> in total white, with the whole world in flux.

That was the closest to what they’d felt. And from Flicker came an answering <white-white-white> that was Flicker’s camouflage in direst straits. She’d spooked her horse—he hoped that was all it was.

“I wish you’d stay here,” she said. “Something’s real wrong up there.”

He hadn’t looked for that, for her to be thinking in the midst of this to be going alone.

So did he, except for knowing he’d be a total fool. Tara didn’t have a hole in her side. Tara didn’t have any debt to the kids.

Or maybe she did. She thought of <boys playing in the snow.> And right along with it was <Carlo and Randy in the rider-shelter. With Da

She was thinking about <Tarmin streets. Bakery shop. Old woman, offering her a muffin from a sack, on the walk outside.> She was thinking about <group of people in the village, all holding lights, walking together through the snow.> He didn’t know what that was. He thought it might be something to do with the church, but <happiness> had gone with it.

“You don’t know, do you,” Tara asked him, “what I’m remembering.”

“No.”

“Don’t recognize it?”

He didn’t. But for some reason that was an impetus to hold him close and kiss him on the cheek. It wasn’t sex she meant. Just— friendliness. Just—something kind. He wasn’t sure. He held her, she held him, Burn got up in a fair racket, and Flicker lay down again with a noisy exhalation.

Burn lay down.

The place was quiet, then.

“Wind’s fallen,” he said finally. “Snow might stop soon.”

“Good traction,” she said. “Anything but ice.”

At which point she burrowed close, and he shut his eyes, never having figured what she was talking about, but he knew she was bent on going up there, and that somewhere in her battered sense of loyalties and obligations, she’d remembered her village and a couple of boys she’d known for years before the disaster.

She’d remembered a closeness with the village he’d never felt for anything made of boards and nails and involving roofs over his head.

But then—the things she remembered weren’t just buildings, either.

Chapter 13

There was a presence in the passage, early in the morning, and Cloud knew it—Cloud was aware of <men underground> and disturbed about it, following along the ridge as the <burrowing men> walked under the wall, and picking up <frightened men, angry men> all the way.

Da

Da

Ridley knew the <burrowing men> and wanted <quiet clouds, > too. Callie was <on edge> and Da

A knock came at the passage door about then, and Ridley opened it without hesitation, letting in three men, one with a shotgun, all with a weathered, outsider look about them, leather breeches, leather coats with the fur turned in—no fringes such as a rider wore, but never having seen high-country hunters as a group, Da

“Sorry,” Da

Cloud was out there in the dim first light of dawn, perplexed about the <burrowing men> and not sure what he should do about it, but Da

Cloud was only mildly reassured, but he’d at least settled on the image of <men in coats, men inside by fireplace> and had the notion of <Cloud coming inside to fireside.>

But <flimsy boards> on the steps dissuaded that with a strong argument, leaving a mildly <upset nighthorse> behind, with Slip and Shimmer, who didn’t find anything unusual in the <men inside. >

Da